Fiction

Please read the following guidelines before submitting. They're important, we promise.

We accept all forms of short fiction: short stories, flash fiction, and novel excerpts that meet our guidelines.

There is a 5,000-word limit on short fiction. While we accept novel excerpts that stand alone and meet this word limit, we do not read full novels, novellas, or plays.

Please submit only one piece and therefore only one file, unless you're writing flash fiction or very, very short stories. For flash fiction, you may submit multiple stories in a single file as long as the submission conforms to our word limit.

Please use standard formatting for fiction submissions: double spacing, a standard 12-point font (such as Times New Roman), and 1-inch margins. Your full name and contact information should appear on the first page of the submission along with the title of the story. Every subsequent page should contain your last name, a shortened form of the story's title, and a page number.

Please submit work that has not been previously published. We do accept previously published works in translation and are open to considering work that has only been published online.

For translations, we accept translations of non-English works into English. We typically publish fiction in the translation only, but still require permission for publication in SAND from both the author and translator and, if necessary, the author’s publisher. If you are submitting a translation, please include the name and brief biography for both the author and translator in your cover letter.

At this time, we compensate our contributors with a free copy of the issue in which their work appears. If you pre-order the upcoming issue and are included in it, you may select another issue of your choice. All rights to your work revert back to you after publication.